Solitude & Company by Silvana Paternostro

Author:Silvana Paternostro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magical realism author, socialist author, colombian writer, colombian author, biography of gabito, biography of gabo, magical realism, literary icon, literary legend, collective biography, literary legends, oral history, biography of Nobel Prize winner, Nobel Prize winner, biography of literary icon, Latin American literary icon, biography in translation, Gabriel Garcia Marquez biography, biography of latino author, latino author, latin american author, author biography, oral biography, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
ISBN: 9781609808976
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2019-01-22T18:00:00+00:00

* María Félix, one of Mexico’s iconic movie stars from the forties and fifties, the golden age of Mexican cinema, is like a Mexican Elizabeth Taylor.

18

Geography Lesson

In which the region that gave rise to Macondo is discussed

EDUARDO MÁRCELES DACONTE: Aracataca has about five thousand people. I don’t know how many, but a lot of people there have read the novel. Well, reading is more emotional when a person can recognize things. Perhaps in another person it would be more intellectual. But I’m referring to the case of someone who recognizes the town, the place, and the people, isn’t that right? There’s a more emotional relationship, even a sentimental one, if you prefer . . . For the people from there many of the things are no surprise; in fact, for the people from the Coast. You know, we exaggerate a lot of things, and we say things, many things that, well . . . So I think things are taken more naturally.

Let me draw it for you here on this napkin. This is the coast: here’s the Magdalena River, here’s Barranquilla. Santa Marta is here. All this is the Sierra Nevada. Then Aracataca is here. Fifty miles to the south is Aracataca. It’s on the spurs of the Sierra Nevada. The Magdalena River. Here’s Fundación and here’s the road to Bucaramanga and the interior of the country. Do you see? According to this, Mompox is more or less here, on the banks of the Magdalena River that comes through here. The departments of Atlántico and Bolívar are here. Riohacha is over here.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is from the river to here, from the Magdalena River to the east, the northeast of the coast. That is, everything that would become the region of Santa Marta, Ciénaga, the banana zone, and then from the Sierra Nevada to Riohacha, which is where the founders of Macondo come from. You know that Aureliano Buendía killed Prudencio Aguilar in La Guajira; then there’s a kind of exodus, and the ones who leave are the ones who found Macondo. He takes this from his grandfather’s story.

PATRICIA CASTAÑO: On the trip we made to retrace the journey of One Hundred Years of Solitude, his English biographer Gerald Martin and I went from Maicao to Barrancas, Guajira, which is an important town today because of the coal mines in El Cerrejón. It must have had something then as well because Colonel Márquez left Riohacha for Barrancas. I think it was an area of colonization, like an opening of the frontier. And it must have been a town rich in cattle, maybe. Then we go there looking for the history of the family, the arrival of Colonel Márquez in Barrancas. And Doña Tranquilina doesn’t arrive right away. That is, he goes first. Then when Doña Tranquilina comes and they move into the house, he’d already had a series of lovers (it seems he was dreadful). And one of those lovers seems to be Medardo’s mother, who was a lady of rather easy virtue.

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